sents progress toward definiteness, but in a one-sided way. Specific properties are distinguished, but not relationships.[1] On the other hand, students of philosophy and of the general aspects of natural and social science are apt to acquire a store of terms that signify relations without balancing them up with terms that designate specific individuals and traits. The ordinary use of such terms as causation, law, society, individual, capital, illustrates this tendency.
Words alter their meanings so as to change their logical functions In the history of language we find both aspects of the growth of vocabulary illustrated by changes in the sense of words: some words originally wide in their application are narrowed to denote shades of meaning; others originally specific are widened to express relationships. The term vernacular, now meaning mother speech, has been generalized from the word verna, meaning a slave born in the master's household. Publication has evolved its meaning of communication by means of print, through restricting an earlier meaning of any kind of communication—although the wider meaning is retained in legal procedure, as publishing a libel. The sense of the word average has been generalized from a use connected with dividing loss by shipwreck proportionately among various sharers in an enterprise.[2]
Similar changes occur in the vocabulary of every student These historical changes assist the educator to appreciate the changes that occur with individuals together with advance in intellectual resources. In studying
- ↑ The term general is itself an ambiguous term, meaning (in its best logical sense) the related and also (in its natural usage) the indefinite, the vague. General, in the first sense, denotes the discrimination of a principle or generic relation; in the second sense, it denotes the absence of discrimination of specific or individual properties.
- ↑ A large amount of material illustrating the twofold change in the sense of words will be found in Jevons, Lessons in Logic.
